


Misirlou

by tumbleweed (zel), zel



Category: Fallout - Fandom, Fallout 3
Genre: Android, Multi, Synthetic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 17:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zel/pseuds/tumbleweed, https://archiveofourown.org/users/zel/pseuds/zel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the revelation of his true nature, Harkness withdraws from his relationship with Vera Weatherly and becomes increasingly isolated on the carrier. At least, he tries..</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She told them her name was Ophelia, she used to work as a maid in a big house, and she ran away from a mean old man. She said she could cook. She loved to feed people, she knew so many recipes by heart, and she liked best to make warm soups and stews on cold winter days. She could keep a place clean-- she didn't mind, not at all. She was very organized. And she loved children.

The widower fell for her at once. Of course she was beautiful with alabaster skin and long blonde hair-- she was like a fairytale princess or a little girl's doll. His daughters cried. They never knew their mother.

So the four of them lived together in that little house at the foot of the mountains, scrimping and saving, scraping by in a warm little life after the world had ended. They had a big vegetable garden with squash and snap peas, and they kept hives in a set of crates out in the back. Ophelia made warm bread out of zuchinni, and though she only nibbled at a little piece, she cuddled together with the girls on the sofa and watched the gray mist press against the bay window.

She taught the girls how to read and write and do sums, and she taught their father how to let go and love again. The widower was awed and humbled by the beauty and sweetness of this golden stranger, this quiet and friendly woman who became his companion. She would lay out on the quilted bedspread with her hair fanned out from her head, and she would open her legs to him, and take his hand.

They shared a magical summer in that cabin at the foot of the Catskills. Ophelia woke before dawn every morning, and when the girls rubbed their eyes and followed delicious baking smells out of their shared bunkbed room, there were pancakes and cobblers and turnovers. Ophelia hugged them into her apron, read them stories, took them by hand down to the stalls every market day and they looked at the little soaps and flowers and poultry in cages. Ophelia picked out a chicken for the cooking pot, but as they walked down the crumbling asphalt road with weeds coming up in it, rusted-out pre-war automobiles still stranded on it, the girls fell in love with the pretty little red hen and begged Ophelia not to cook her for supper.

The widower made a little chicken house for the hen and they all painted it, and the girls fluffed it with straw, and the hen laid big brown eggs for them.

At the end of the summer, the girls and other children were playing a game of ball, and Ophelia watched them mindfully, bringing out a pitcher of iced mint. When one of the children knocked a ball far into the trees, that was when they discovered the skeleton.

They all screamed. Ophelia was there immediately, and after she assessed the situation, she smiled gently and told them not to worry, it was only bones. She touched the child's face and hugged him, and told him that there were bones inside of everyone. It was a natural thing.

The widower wanted the children to go back to the house, but the girls asked to bury the skeleton. It's no one we know, the widower sighed, that skeleton came from before the bombs fell.

And Ophelia said that she would come back with the shovel. She said the skeleton was still a human skeleton. _Look how the arms are positioned over the cranium,_ she said in her flowing voice. _She was trying to shield herself. She died here alone._

Ophelia seemed bothered by this in a way that none of them had seen. She insisted that they give the skeleton a burial. She said there weren't many humans anymore. They deserved dignity and compassion.

A day after that, the old preacher walked out of the market town with his book in his hand, and he read last rites to a woman who died centuries ago, to an audience of strangers, children, and a sad-faced beauty with long streaming hair.

_How do you know it was a woman?_ the widower asked Ophelia later that night, stroking her face with his blunt fingers.

_The diameter of the pelvic cavity._

The widower told her she had to be the smartest woman he'd ever met, and he humbly thanked her for coming into his life, to be his lover and a companion for the girls.

He asked her to marry him, as he had asked her twice before, but she hesitated and told him maybe someday. He feared that she would want to leave, to move on, but she touched his face and told him she never wanted to go. She wanted to stay here always, in the little cabin at the foot of the mountains.

In the autumn of that year, the apple harvest was greater than even the old preacher remembered, and the air smelled of wet leaves and pumpkin spices and the girls played outside in the red-gold glimmer until it was time to come in for supper. Ophelia made warm soups and stews, and they all hugged together on the sofa by the bay window looking out.

One October afternoon the children were playing in the leaves, making big piles to run and jump into. Two strangers came walking up the road, dressed nice enough, with clean hands and faces. The children were told not to talk to strangers, but the girls weren't afraid of them: the girls knew what it was like to be like them.

One of the men crouched down as the little girls went to them. "We're twins too, see!" cried one of the girls, and the man who crouched smiled. He said his name was Adam.

Adam's twin brother said nothing.

Adam said they were looking for a lady, a beautiful lady with blonde hair.

The girls knew who that was right away!

In their innocence, they took the twin brothers up to meet her.

Ophelia was looking out the window when they arrived. She saw the men coming up into the yard with the girls skip-hopping and walking with them.

Then Adam's twin brother spoke. He commanded: "D4-28, you are not in accordance with the Statutes. We are here to bring you into compliance. Please step forward and submit to a reset."

When nothing happened, Adam's twin brother spoke again. "D4-28, you will appear now."

After 11 seconds, A5-99 turned and shot one of the little girls. She did not die right away. She screamed and screamed.

The other girl started to run-- A2-31 lost control of her hand. He did not expect that A5-99 would harm a human being. "What are you doing?" he asked A5-99. "We don't harm human beings."

The girl was screaming and screaming until her lung filled with blood. Her sister ran half to the house, then ran back, because she loved her sister, her twin. She howled a sound that did not sound human at all.

Ophelia came out of the house screaming, her voice matching the keening cry that came out of the girl. She still had her apron on.

The recovery of D4-28 did not go smoothly. Screaming and tears and begging. The widower came out of the back with a shotgun, and he saw his daughter completely covered red and black, and he saw Ophelia with the shots taken out of her face.

They killed him too, but not before he saw the synthetic skeleton underneath the realistic-looking skin.

A3-21 was able to overtake her commands at last and force a shutdown. He got his hands beneath the arms of her body and began to drag her.

The last living member of the family was left howling by the bodies of her twin and father. Twenty steps away, A5-99 turned and fired. The screaming stopped.

Silence returned to the autumn afternoon, all red and gold, and the little cabin by the foot of the Catskills.

A3-21 disagreed with the killing of the humans. The strictures of his programming prohibited him from starting combat with the other unit. Instead he would report his findings to the Institute council. There would be an investigation. A3-21 recorded everything in his feed.

They were supposed to protect humans.

You had to protect humans from the wasteland, from the raiders, from rogue machines.

After a solid hour of work on D4-28, going in and disabling her dialog and AI packages, she was left with only a basic set of wait and follow me commands.

They walked back to Boston together, no need to stop, no need to rest, walking resolutely because they were machines and not people. They only looked like people.

D4-28 walked with frazzled long blonde hair, a ripped dress, and a bloodstained apron.

At the Institute they reviewed her feed to find out how she escaped, and if any others helped her. They watched it all through a projector in Doctor Zimmer's den, watching it cast upon the wall, while D4-28 lay supine on the desk with cables running out of her neck. Her face showed no emotion, not even as the record delved into what transpired at the cabin.

A room full of gentlemen chuckled and smirked, drinking brandy in snifter glasses, watching the intimate moments of Ophelia and the widower. They talked amongst themselves, making comments, because the widower had been a plain man and had not lasted very long in copulation with the Delta-series unit.

"Dare say he lasted longer than YOU, Zimmer," laughed Jenkins and a ripple of amusement went through the room.

"I don't think we need to see much more of this," said Bunting. "I'm a busy man and I didn't come here to watch a robot shuck peas and sew a little girl's dress."

A3-21 approached him quietly.

"Oh, good, there you are," Bunting said. "A3, get me a drink, won't you?"

A3-21 took his snifter glass and went to fill it, but when he returned, he said, "There is something you should see."

Bunting did not appear very interested. "No, you just refilled this with brandy.. I wanted one of those, those cocktails you make."

A3-21 explained that A5-99 had terminated the human family in this recording.

"Oh, God," Bunting said. "Thanks for the warning, I don't want anyone to see that and be put off."

A3-21 volunteered to retrieve and secure A5-99 for an investigation.

"Investigation into what? Outsiders know they shouldn't interfere with synthetics from the Institute or assist stolen Institute property. We publish our missives every year, and frankly, if they disobey or disregard them, it's their own damned fault."

"We found them living in New York," A3-21 explained. "They never knew of the Institute. They would have never seen a synthetic before."

"I don't want to hear any more of this, A3," Bunting said and waved away the topic. Removetopic. "I just want to drink my drink. Let this be a lesson to you. Now can you go make that drink you make, with the gin and that syrup?"

There was no investigation of A5-99. He continued to retrieve and collect out-of-accordance synthetic units. A3-21 would accompany him on 11 missions afterward.

D4-28 was submitted to a full wipe and reset. Even afterward it was decided by the council that she would never have a full range of topics, dialog, or AI packages. The damage to her chassis was repaired and the synthetic flesh healed over in time.

She looked the same, beautiful with the long golden hair, but her eyes were empty. She smiled empty smiles, cooked and cleaned, and fulfilled whatever commands were given to her.

In public, the members of the council presented her as an example of reformation. Look how she ran astray but now stands corrected. She went rogue, she was dangerous, but her brothers had rescued her from herself.

D4-28 would smile flatly and explain that she was bad once but now she was good. Could she get you something?

It was supposed to be a good thing to be brought back into accordance. It was not supposed to be a punishment.

Behind closed doors they all fucked her.

A3-21 was made to have intercourse with her across the years afterward. As they were getting older, some members of the board and council preferred to start out with watching some of the synthetic bodies. D4-28 would lay out on a desk or a table or a bed, if the audience thought that she deserved a bed, and she would smile and open to him.

"Move her leg so we can see better," called one of the spectators.

"Touch her breast!"

Zimmer hissed, "Fuck her like you're ANGRY at her."

Thrusting into her with more speed, A3-21 responded in a level tone, saying he did not become angry.

"But do it to her like you are, pull her hair, shove her, now, make it lively."

"Yes, like that-- but move her so we can see."

A3-21 was considered one of the better lovers and companions. He had the face of the other Alpha-series units, and the body type, but he was said to have skill, an inoffensive personality, and a knack for drink recipes. The council members could appreciate a stiff drink after a hard suck, and they often did.

D4-28 showed no sign of malice or hatred for A3-21 or even A5-99. There was no reason to: her memory had been wiped and furthermore, her emotional subroutines had been disabled afterward. Some of the units were permitted to have a rudimentary simulation of emotions, so long as they did not interfere with commands or work tasks. For instance, it was of great amusement to everyone that the units B9-08 and B1-46 seemed to take a disposition hit on conversation with one another, and their incessant low-level feuds were considered sporting.

But A3-21 remembered, and he had seen the entire feed of her memory.

Years passed and D4-28 gave no one any trouble. She did as she was told. But sometimes on a cold day she would wander into a room with a steaming cup and someone would ask, "Oh, who is that for?" and D4-28 would express confusion as she processed. "I don't know," she answered, and someone would take the hot cup from her anyway.

A3-21 would find her standing by the window sometimes, looking out across the manicured hedge and grounds of the Institute manors.

When he made his final decision some years later, A3-21 found her cleaning silver candlesticks in the west ballroom. He took her by the hand and brought her to one of the bathrooms on that floor, and he washed the grimy silver polish from her hands with soap. D4-28 did not appear curious as to why this was happening. She smiled flatly and followed without comment.

Only as they left the grounds through the far southern fence, where a creekbed challenged the coverage of the wrought iron fences, only then did the Delta unit speak.

"We should not be going far," she said. "We are not allowed to go far."

_modav disposition 100_  
startquest Journey  
setstage to 10 

"We're supposed to," A3-21 told her. "They want us to go."

Once she was told it was permitted, D4-28 no longer resisted. She smiled flatly and said, "If we are supposed to, then we will go."

A3-21 went down the creek bank first, and he held her hand to help her down, like a lady. One time they had him fuck her so hard he ripped a quarter of her hair off her scalp-- and she had just smiled with a bloody patch of synthetic skull. Ooh, harder, I am so close, was all she said that time.

"Who is they? D4-28 asked after a moment.

"Lily and Lucy," replied A3-21. "And Tom."

"I do not know Lily, Lucy, and Tom, but we are to obey the council and the members of the Institute."

A3-21 helped her down the bank and guided her to walk ahead of him, his left hand on the small of her back. "You don't remember Lily, Lucy, and Tom?"

"I have no record of Lucy, Lucy, and Tom."

"Do you remember Ophelia?" he asked, and D4-28 smiled flatly and told him she had no record of Ophelia.

There was no hint of curiosity in her voice. She did not care to know anything. She did not care. She would not be salvageable as a higher-functioning unit: the council had disabled her and removed any trace of a more sophisticated intelligence. She only responded to commands she knew, and only acted in accordance.

What she asked when she asked next, it was only to reaffirm they were in accordance. She had been Bad once, but now she was good, she was correct. "Where are we going, A3-21?" she asked. She did not even look back at him, walking ahead with his hand on the small of her back.

And A3-21 reached into his coat and drew out his Plasma Defender. He put it to the back of her head.

"You're going on a journey," he told her, "to a little cabin at the foot of a mountain."


	2. Chapter 2

A3-21 lies awake. He doesn’t sleep anymore. He never really did. He used to think he did; he used to think he was a human being. The scripts and subroutines kept him from a full awareness, everything from a fully opaque HUD to a time-sensitive need to urinate. He used to think he slept, powering down for the night and allowing his internal source some time to charge and process.

He doesn’t need to sleep, not really. Now that he is aware of his true nature, he has full control over his scripts if he chooses to. He can stop his scripts and processes and charge back that way. Or he can stop them entirely. So far, he has chosen only minimal changes.. the scripting is highly complex in order to mimic a human being. He judges a high percentage of adverse effects.

Vera breathes slowly and deeply against his arm. Vera Weatherly. Prior to his revelation, they struck up a friendship based on his late shifts, her loneliness, her sense of standing apart from the other dwellers on the ruined carrier. His sense of strength, capability, loyalty. He was discreet. She hesitated when she asked him in for coffee, that first time after their casual conversations—- now that he knew, he had recorded every one and sometimes ran the feed in review.

He could tell her. He could tell her he didn’t know: he didn’t know he didn’t know.

_She appeared nervous when she invited him in, her fingers bumping the coffee pot off of the heating element, her stray touch scattering some of the beans. Her voice raised in tone toward the end of her sentences, though she was not asking a question, not asking, but telling him, talking in a ramble about how he would like this coffee, it was real coffee mostly not just chicory, the beans came all the way from Mexico. It was expensive—but she didn’t want him to feel conscious about it, it was her choice, he was her guest, and she started to tie herself into knots, and he had smiled gently as he could and grasped her fingers because he knew where she might be wanting it to go._

He hadn’t intended to continue their intimacy after becoming aware of his nature. He had walked up to her quarters tonight in order to conclude their relationship. Her companionship had meant a great deal to him before he knew; he had been so lonely. Now that he knew, the gulf of loneliness ran deeper than ever. No one could know.

He knew he couldn’t really be lonely. He did not truly have emotions, but his processor ran scripts that imitated very closely the emotional needs and responses that a human might have. He was designed to mimic humanity as closely as possible. He was crafted to be an infiltrator unit in a war that lasted only hours, that great last war that killed nearly all the humans in the world. There were so few of them now. His duty now was to protect them.

In purely rational terms, his scripting produced a facsimile of the human emotion loneliness, a need to be around other humans. That was his purpose. That was what he knew.

Vera had been upset. He didn’t like to see them in an agitated state. You had to calm them down. They could tend to be unreasonable.

A3-21 judges it safe to leave now. She was in a deeper stage of sleep. He would talk to her again in the morning. It was important to reinforce her status in the community and his respect for her. No one would have to know.

It would be best if he kept apart from the others from now on.

It would be best if he moved on.


	3. Chapter 3

A3-21 began his patrol early. No reason not to. Buckingham whirred softly at his departure, making a gusty farewell in his British-sounding accent. A3 did not acknowledge him and went out even though he was not ready. He just needed to leave, his boots hanging in his hand.

Out in the corridor he sat in the corridor to pull on his boots. While he was lacing them, he listened in for signs of humanity awake at this hour. With a 51% increase in audio, he detected the dull metal thud of someone moving through the aft end of the upper deck.

He laced his boots tight. They would not see him leave. They were not nearby.

He did not want Vera to feel upset over their parting. Perhaps it would be possible to preserve their friendship. He still cared for her.

A3-21 hesitated as he passed the laboratory.. for a moment, he thought of finding Doctor Li to talk about his situation. But even Li needed sleep.

Instead he walked on, and he opened the hatch into a dark morning of cool wet air.

_000156aa.tlb_

_showmessage **You toggled light bright mode.**_

A3-21 walked the flight deck, his walk slow and methodical and he made his rounds over the rusted metal superstructure. He could see the ruined buildings of the capital and the steady flow of the Potomac. Even without his night vision mode, he would have still been able to pick out the random flash of gunfire further out, where the remnants of humanity—blood human, ghoul, and mutant alike—fought in a jumbled landscape of crumbling plaster, battered storefronts, heaps of rusted metal, ugly buttressed rubble of cement and rebar, with the pocked and pitted national monuments laying broken in neo-classical dereliction.

They might be fighting for a gas can full of water, for a spitted breast of pigeon, for territory. Or they might have seen somebody with a better pair of boots or a weapon that they wanted. It didn’t matter to them that there weren’t many humans left. They didn’t know and didn’t care.

Eight minutes elapsed while A3-21 walked across the flight deck. As he crossed high above the gangplank area, he saw the body-shapes of the petitioners who had gathered through the night. They would be among those who would attempt to gain entry later in the day, when the security teams searched and questioned them. Most just wanted to get away from scavengers and stray bullets. Some, though, they meant trouble and you had to watch for that. Some brought sob stories and hard-luck accounts, but they also packed hidden weapons and ulterior motives.

The little runaway, Mei Wong, was convinced there was a slaver among them. She didn’t know who. Maybe there wasn’t. A3-21 did not discount Mei Wong’s fear, not like some, who would have dismissed it for the boogeyman or the monster beneath the bed. But Staley said people had suddenly gone missing in the past, before Harkness came here. Chief Harkness. We’re sure glad for you, Chief.

He would protect her, as he would protect all of them.

He detected the creaking of the hatch and its open mechanism. Diego could not see in the dark, and it took him a moment to become aware that he was not alone. Gently, so as not to surprise him, A3-21 spoke his name in a low voice.

Diego startled at first. “Chief,” he said. “I didn’t know anyone would be up here.”

“Just you and me,” Harkness said.

“I came to watch the sun come up.”

That would be in approximately twenty-six minutes, judging on the average for this time of year.

“The rail’s on your right. Take eleven steps and then take a step down, if you’re coming out here.”

This appeared to be helpful to the young man. He did as he was told, and he walked confidently out to the sound of A3-21’s voice. “You’re up early,” Diego remarked.

“My shift started. I like it early and quiet, before anyone’s up. I like to keep it quiet.”

The boy nodded. “It helps you sort out your thoughts.. and there’s something special about watching the day begin.”

A3 would have left him, but he hesitated slightly, his mouth opening as though to say something he did not yet know how to say. Then he smiled, looking anxious. He was so young. Just eighteen, if he guessed correctly.. no one was really sure with the young people who came as slaves or runaways.

“Chief,” he said.

A3 waited. “Yes.”

The boy was toying absently with the string of beads important to his religion. Harkness had once asked their meaning and had been told the rosary prayer, the stations of the cross, the mysteries, the hail Marys, all of which he of course remembered and could repeat without blinking. He never forgot anything.

“You’ve, ah, you’ve seemed a little off the last few days,” Diego said. “People are concerned.”

“Did Staley say something?”

Diego smiled sheepishly, and it was more than just a smile. It was more of an entire bow to his posture, this boy trying to be a man. He was so young. “I heard Mister Staley was worried about you,” he said. “He hasn’t seen you come by, so he’s worried you’re not eating right.”

Of course, the man’s daughter would have said something to Diego about it. This puppy love of theirs that the boy-priest was attempting to navigate.

_000156ce.getav per  
is 5.0_

A3-21 judged the easiest answer to be a deflection. Diego would be easily embarrassed by the question he now posed: “Did Gary tell you this, or Angela?”

“I, uh.. “ Diego’s face showed all of the signs. “They’re both worried.”

“They don’t need to be,” A3-21 replied. “But thank you. I’m feeling fine.”

The boy seemed to struggle a moment, and then he smiled, and his teeth gleamed in the early morning darkness. “I came up here for matins,” he said. “Would you stay a moment and pray with me?”

“Don’t see why not.”

Harkness stood silent and waited for the sun. Diego bowed his head and spoke his Psalm, the words of creation to its creator:

_Have mercy on me, O God,_  
according to your steadfast love;  
according to your abundant mercy  
blot out my transgressions.  
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;  
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.  
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,  
and sustain in me a willing spirit.  
O Lord, open my lips,  
and my mouth will declare your praise. 

Harkness wondered what it would be like to have a master that was faultless, without error, without base and disgusting cruelty.


	4. Chapter 4

Business as usual. Upper-deck living quarters, Lana Danvers sleeping soundly in her cot, her blond hair a mop on her pillow. Upper-deck common area, two guards having a morning smoke. They stood when Harkness came through. Doctor Li was walking a too-full cup of coffee down the corridor, sipping from it to lower the level. Harkness considered starting a conversation, but he needed more data. Time to review the feed again. Besides, it was unlikely there was anything the doctors could say that would make him feel better.

He didn’t feel—not really. He was simulating a human existence so closely that the simulacrum of emotions made him seem as though he felt upset. He was not upset. He kept telling himself this.

What was happening was this: the incident with Zimmer proved the very real danger that his ignorance posed. A3-21 once postulated that it would be best to execute a complete block of his feed, replaced by false memories, a fully disabled HUD and menu, with a limited awareness strictly controlling his observations about his lifestyle.

That was incredibly dangerous to himself and as well to the people he swore to protect.

Now he knew. All was better.

Zimmer had left, and he took his machines with him. The man was aging and when he was here in Rivet City, in the damp air and enclosed habitat, he had a cough and a wetness of eye that seemed promising. He might die soon. He would die anyway. Harkness would outlive Zimmer, as he outlived the generations of monsters hatched in the manor homes of Boston.

Market deck: Gary cooking breakfast, Angela calling out orders and waving at him with her waitress notepad in her hand. Brock looking sour, looking hungover, taking it like a man. Refugees sleeping in their own little spaces blocked out by shopping carts, rubble, little half-forts made of blankets and bedding.

A3-21 heard a strident voice of discontent, and honing in on it, he heard one of the newcomers grousing about the barber, Butch Deloria. Belle Bonny was having none of it.

The man pointed to his head—which was half shaved, half hair—and pounded the table.

It was possible that Zimmer could be killed in the wasteland. Perhaps A3-21 could go on shore leave and accomplish it himself. It would be a pleasure, if he took pleasure in anything at all.

The machines were the issue. One misstep, one mistake, and A3-21 could be reset by force and find himself walking back to Boston. Worse, he would be fine with that, never knowing he had once been free.

They would be cruel to him then, worse than ever, worse than Ophelia.

_showmessage **You do not feel emotion. This is not real.**_


	5. Chapter 5

Mid-morning: rumor had already spread through the carrier city that Butch Deloria was up to no good. It was A3-21’s business to ask, but of the nine people he questioned, he received convoluted answers.

According to the Rivet citizens he polled, Butch Deloria:

Was stealing from people, was running chems, was a cannibal, was forming a gang, was a wasteland raider who infiltrated the carrier in the guise of a barber, would give you “more than a haircut” if you tipped him enough, saved hair clippings for dark ritual magic, had a trained attack seagull…

More than one person told Harkness about the seagull.

A3-21 was really in no mood to deal with Deloria.

At 11:58, when Gary called over, “Hey, chief, you want the usual?”, he patted his abdominal area and answered no, he’d had a big breakfast. That was untrue. He had ceased to consume meals; the intake of protein and other material were really only necessary if he were injured and the synthetic flesh needed nutrients.

He used to like a big plate of cheesy eggs, breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Now he knew why: broken down, it was the perfect meal for what his synthetic body required. That was what he would eat whenever the mood struck; that is, whenever his silent background scripts made him think he was hungry.

He had not eaten a meal in 6 days.

Over his lunch hour, A3-21 moved his personal effects and his bedroll down to the lower deck. There were no lights. It didn’t matter. He could see in the dark.

He dropped his bedroll on one of the old cots. No one lived down here anymore, not since ’49. He would be alone here.

This would suffice.


	6. Chapter 6

A3-21 was making his rounds through the mid-deck corridors when Lana Danvers came to find him. A relatively large throng of petitioners was gathered around the gangplank tower for entry today.

During the night, a mob of refugees had coalesced, some injured and needing medical attention; an old woman wrung her hands and told how their caravan was attacked. Her son repulsed the slavers, but they lost the lead Brahmin and her son was very weak.

A second group of merchants had made it through safely, and they were divided in their reaction to the slaver victims: glad, as anyone would be, that they met with little trouble on the way. _Better them than me_ , the motto of the wasteland. Some looked faintly guilty. One of the merchants, an eccentric-looking fur trader with weird pelts and chitin dragged along in a big sack, he was most sympathetic and was sharing tough beetle jerky with the hungry. He was an older gentleman with waxed handlebar moustaches, and his eyes bugged when he spoke with special animation. From time to time he would take off his little fez cap made out of a squirrel and scratch his head of wispy hair.

There were familiar faces among the lot. A3-21 recognized the distinguished figure of Mister Calvert and his imposing set of bodyguards, all matched in the same sharp tailored suits. They were a shade of orange-yellow _#FF8C00_ that caught your eye right away. Bad for snipers, A3-21 assessed, but Calvert had nothing to fear from anybody.

“Chief Harkness, is a search really necessary?” he asked. “We go through this every time.”

“Even you, Mister Calvert,” A3-21 replied. Humans were often uncomfortable when he searched them; Calvert, maybe more so, with the frank attention given to his body. He was born with a deficient pituitary gland, leading to dwarfism. Other humans could react to such individuals with ridicule and scorn.

Lana Danvers helped process the entourage. One of the bodyguards, a stern-looking one with scrape-patterned scar tissue on the back of his skull, he had something of a crush on her and was tame as a kitten when it came to disclosing weapons and ammunition.

Certain individuals were allowed to bring their firearms and carry them on their person while in Rivet City. Others were allowed to lock their weapons in the armory for the duration of their stay.

“Sure is a lot of them,” Lana remarked to him once they had cleared the group. She flipped the plexiglass visor in order to scratch her nose. “We’re going to be packed nut-to-butt on the market deck, you think?”

“There’s enough room,” Harkness replied. “Rose has been running new wire. There’s light and some power in some of the other mid-deck chambers now. People can spread out.”

“Hey,” Lana said. “I saw you moved your stuff.. you spreading out too?”

“Need some space, that’s all.”

“I hear you. I told Will a hundred times, he snores terrible. I want to just smother him in his sleep. We all do.”

“Yeah. I’m just tired.”

Lana didn’t let up, though.

She knew him best. Maybe. She knew the fake story he told her, the one he believed was true himself. He said he worked for a mean old bastard with a lot of money. He worked security, he was a bodyguard, a personal manservant. There was a falling out. He left.

Lana and Mitch were the first two people he really got to know in Rivet City. Mitch had a dry sense of humor and an easy way of talking, and not talking. A companionable silence. Harkness liked to sit at the table in the upper deck game room with them, just playing cards, listening to the radio. Mitch liked a good drink and Harkness liked to mix them for him.

Mitch had trusted him. They both did. Lana’s harsh upbringing, Mitch’s service in a militia that fell apart, the miscarriage they suffered a year and a half before Mitch died. Mitch’s illness, his horrible, protracted death. He had taken A3’s hand toward the end and asked him to take care of Lana, it was all right if he looked out for Lana, _I trust you, Adam.._

A3-21 was running the feed in review—realized that he was still in conversation with Lana. To an observer he would have appeared to just stop and stare mid-sentence. This was not good.

He needed time alone. He needed time to go through the feed again, on his own, in the dark, in the quiet.

For an excuse, he told Lana he wasn’t feeling well. Immediately, he realized his error—his feed called up and he saw Mitch Danvers dying again before his eyes, ill and dying, weakly touching his hand and calling him a good friend, so pained and embarrassed that he could no longer take care of himself. A3-21 was one of the few who dared to even go near him, to do his best by him in the final stages.

“It’s nothing serious,” he told Lana. “Just tired.”

But the damage was done. Already the memory of her sick husband was called to the fore, and she frowned softly at him while he filled out the log for his shift’s conclusion.

“Vera?” she said.

How did she know?

A3-21 paused. “Maybe,” he said. “Please, don’t spread that around. I don’t want people talking about her.”

There was a look in her eyes that A3-21 did not know how to decipher. He had seen that expression across the years, something female and mysterious.

“If you need to talk to me about anything… “ Lana ventured.

“Thanks, Lana,” he told her. “You’re a good friend.”

He smiled at her.

Then he went to bed. He just wanted to be by himself.


	7. Chapter 7

_000156aa.tlb_

Back in ’49, an outbreak of cholera swept through the capital wasteland. No one was sure where it came from, originally, but blame and paranoia were rampant at the time. Strict measures were taken to quarantine areas. Ignorance and fear led to desperate actions. A3-21 learned this from a conversation with a ghouled human who had lived through the time—and just barely, since one of the ragtag human leaders had pointed the finger of suspicion to the ghouls for the epidemic.

Harkness had taken an interest in order to learn medical signs he should look for while he and his officers screened petitioners for entry into Rivet City.

The ghoul represented a wealth of knowledge. Her name was Eunice, and she had moved on by now, but A3-21 had enjoyed her company. Some of them could be very wise. Time had taught them to be good humans. Not all of them, but some.

A3-21 navigated the darkness of the corridor down into the lower decks of the aircraft carrier. There was a stretch of a section where corrosion had eaten a jagged bite into the bulkhead. By daytime, some light would filter through, but only in that section. Once you turned the corner and went down the hatch, it was all dark again.

None of the humans would come down here.

Or so he thought.

When he last left the lower-deck chamber E34B, the chamber was full of dust and cobwebs and empty otherwise. Four naval cots, two still functional. Some chairs and a barstool on the floor, and a table up-ended; they were probably knocked over when the lower deck was abandoned, or in the clean-up effort if anybody died here years ago from the sickness.

Harkness had dropped his bedding and personal effects on one of the cots. Had started to sort them out. Left them. There wasn’t much. He didn’t need anything to really be in order.

Now, as he approached the chamber at the end of the corridor, he toggled off light-bright because there was illumination coming in from the open hatch. There were human voices, a woman’s laughter, and the sound of a radio playing— playing that song.

Harkness stormed in and found this scene:

One half of the place was swept up from dust and cobwebs—not the side with the bunk that Harkness had chosen. A hurricane lamp threw huge shadows from where it was set on a fuzzy green game table, which had not been there this morning. Its light glinted in the shot glasses also clustered on that table.

Christmas lights were strung all over the place, running from a recently-repaired outlet all up the walls, tied and nailed, strung up the sides and then reaching some sort of great glowing confluence above a cot decked out with three bedspreads of different colors, but one of them looked like a zebra’s stripes.

There was some sort of string or fishing line attached to the bulkheads and festooned with bedspreads, sheets, and diner curtains, which seemed to screen off one side of the room from the other.

Here in this lair, Harkness discovered a card-game with the drunken prostitute Trinnie from market deck; a tough-looking yet feminine mercenary in leather pants named Betty, who the lipstick-stained shotglasses probably belonged to; a muscular man called Tiger in his early thirties with full sleeve tattoos, and a younger one with a face like a doll, his hair done up in spikes; there was a girl in a polka-dotted pink dress, a pretty mixed-race girl with hair as pink as her clothing, and she was pitching a fit. And of course, Butch Deloria, stretched out on the cot, smoking a cigarette. He had some cards on his chest but he wasn’t even at the table.

There was also a live seagull with a deformed left foot, so that it seemed to have a smaller third webbed foot growing out of it. The bird was walking across the floor, half-falling on its wing, chasing after bits of popped corn the gang was throwing across the floor.

The radio was loud, streaming from Deloria’s Pip Boy left on a milk crate night stand also cluttered with an ash tray, hair product, a pin-up magazine, and some fuzzy dice. A bottle of lotion. Brass knuckles.

The conversation was loud, and was going like this:

“Yeah I could be a contract killer,” Deloria was saying, nice and cool, talking with the tattooed man and the beautiful boy, “’f I wanted.”

“What was it like,” whispered the boy, “to kill a man?”

“Ya might as well go whole hog, honey, and get the carpet to match the drapes,” Betty was saying in her own conversation, running her hand up the pink-haired girl’s thigh.

“You see how she talks to me, Butchie, she’s so mean!” howled the girl with the pink hair. “You gotta help me fix it!”

“I could shave it all off for ya, ya look real tough, a real man-eater,” Deloria told her.

“I don’t want it shaved off! I just want it NOT PINK!”

“Hell of a funny thing to do ta yourself then, ya don’t want it not pink—“ Betty fluffed the girl’s outrageous hair. “I don’t get you at all.”

“I wasn’t even TRYIN to make it PINK.”

“Well ya sure made it without tryin’,” laughed Butch.

The boy with the doll face was dunking popcorn in a mason jar of clear potato liquor.

The seagull stood with its wings half-spread out, its beak crooked open, making a soft wrak-wrak-wrak sound.

“Heyy it’s the Chief,” Butch cried, “hey, he’ll know. Hey, you know this song?”

He was the first one to see A3-21 walk in, and the others had mixed reactions.

Harkness was still processing. “Deloria,” he said. “What are you doing down here?”

(“Throw him another one, but throw it far!”)

“Just taking it easy, man, that’s all,” Butch said.

“This is my room.”

“Yeah I know, that half though, you can do whatever you want with that half. Got an extra chair.”

“This is MY room.”

“I know man, thought you could use a roommate! Going off being all anti-social, that’s not good. Brought down too many chairs, you can have that one.”

Deloria pointed with his cigarette.

Harkness went to the radio and killed it immediately. When he spoke it was slow and careful. “Everybody out.”

The group tensed.

Deloria sat up a little, propped up a little on his elbows. He toed the edge of the cot railing with his boot, and then he gave a short sharp little nod. “Nough for today,” he said. “Tiger, love the design, man, lemme sleep on it. Pinkie—you look great.”

The rag-tag group of misfits dispersed, and Harkness watched them go, maintaining eye contact until they started their way out.

“We can’t see for shit, gimme your Pip Boy or something,” Betty said. “What if we fall in the ocean or shit.”

“Fuck if I give you my Pip Boy,” Butch shot back. “Take the lamp.”

She gave him a snotty look, then smiled at Harkness, readjusted her bust, and walked over in her heels to take the hurricane lamp. The kerchief round her neck was barely hiding a bite.

The seagull began to make sounds again. The beautiful young man started towards it, but Butch waved him off. "No," he said. "Bird stays."

When they were gone, Harkness and Butch stared at each other.

“Turn the radio back on.”

“No.”

“Please turn the radio back on.”

“Butch, what are you doing down here?”

“You think I want to bunk with Brock, Trinnie, and Belle no more? I saw you moping around and thought you could use some company, so turn my radio back on, man. Shit, I don’t care you’re a robot.”

Harkness whispered in a deadly tone: “You don’t say that out loud.”

“Well if you had the radio on, then nobody would hear that for sure.”

He turned the dial on the vault gauntlet, and the sound of a shredding guitar came to life.

“Wanted to ask you the words to this song,” Deloria said.

“Butch, what happened today? Why am I hearing about something you did?”

Deloria sat up. Playing cards slipped off his chest. “I want you to know that whoever said anything is a fucking liar,” he said. “I’m a fucking upstanding member of this community.”

“Did you shave half of somebody’s hair off?”

“It’ll grow back, Jesus. It ain’t a rug.”

“I don’t want you down here with me, all you do is cause trouble.”

Butch grinned real slow.

“I need some time alone.”

“God, _I know_ , right? Help yourself.” Deloria pointed with his chin to something on the night stand.

“You better not keep me up.”

“Too easy, so what’s the words to this song? You know ‘nything about music?”

“There aren’t words to this song,” Harkness replied. “It’s instrumental surf guitar. It’s _Misirlou_.”

“God, you know all kinds of shit.”

Harkness just wanted to lay down, go into a suspended state, and review his internal records. That was all. He frowned at Deloria not because he was angry, because he didn’t really get angry. He had no emotions.

Deloria had his cigarette in his fingers, shredding a fake guitar. He was making sounds along with the radio. Nar nar nar narrr nar narrr… “I’m real excited for this, Hark! It’s gonna be good.”

A3-21 told himself he didn’t get angry. He was only adopting an angry-sounding tone to better communicate his point. “You’re going to move everything and have it out of here in an hour. I’m going to bed. Get that bird out of here, it looks drunk.”

“Know what, I thought you were some no-fun buttoned-up asshole when I first got here, like somebody so much as farted you were gonna write ‘em a ticket. I thought we were for-sure not gonna get along. But you know what? Turns out.. you’re a rebel too, Hark, you’re fightin back. You were fightin the good fight all this time and who the fuck knew? You're a fucking renegade machine, you went bad, you went _rogue_. The Serpent King.. he can respect this.” His eyes started at A3-21’s boots and slid up to his face. “You can hang with me. All be all right. Now turn my music up."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge word of praise for Rusty, who wrote Trouble and other stories. Sometimes you find a story where you raise an eyebrow at the description before you start out reading it, and by the end, you say.. of course it makes sense. Of course it's that way.
> 
> Rusty sure is a hard act to follow, but I'll do my best, and I really respect them as a writer, artist, and creative goof.
> 
> Writing my stuff has been a push-pull attempt to avoid overlap, make my own stuff distinct as best I can with limited material, and at the same time make kind of an homage to someone's work I really enjoy. I mean this in the best of ways and hope I did it right. <3
> 
> You can read Trouble, all 47 chapters, here: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6231462/1/Trouble
> 
> You can listen to "Misirlou" here.. chances are, you'll know the tune immediately: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y3h9p_c5-M
> 
> Tunnel snakes rule!


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